to account; history is human
hurt from any injustice and from any experience which persists despite

the rhetoric (oh, you weren’t
reaching for the shelves, were you!);

responding to Paris by
bombing Syria was on the table there-it-was

a rhetorical knee-jerk
blind to any history

hoping for crowd-approval
like the echoes of a playground brawl;

politics should be sharp and uncomfortable,
include all difference

include whatever white elephants are in the room;
spade (sic) politicians who

will not respond to the white elephant
who will not respond to the history

are left with only the puff of rhetoric
braying like farmyard animals, looking

ridiculous; air strikes in Syria are ridiculous

there were a number of terrorist attacks in Paris during January 2015; there was debate in the UK about launching an attack on Syria as a response; the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbin, was courting views on the response – I wrote a poem

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… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes.
~ Annie Dillard